The likelihood of Steve King running for the U.S. Senate in 2014 is growing with each passing day. When longtime Democrat Sen. Tom Harkin announced two and half weeks ago that he planned to retire, King said he was “50/50” on whether or not to run for the soon-to-be-open Senate seat. Now, those odds have increased in favor of senatorial bid.

“That needle has gone over 50 percent,” King told TheIowaRepublican.com. “Each day that has gone by, on balance, it’s more likely, rather than less likely.”

Since King was singled out last week in a New York Times report as the kind of flawed GOP candidate that the newly formed, Karl Rove-affiliated Conservative Victory Project would seek to defeat, the Iowa congressman has shown every sign he intends to make Rove an issue — beginning with a fundraising email Thursday that attacked the GOP strategist “and his army.”

“When Karl Rove decided that he was going to make me his national poster child for their elitist attitude of deciding who would be the nominee and who would not be the nominee, now I’ve got a different battle I need to fight before the way can be clear to do the analysis,” King told The Iowa Republican, “and that is, it’s got to become clear not just to Iowans, but to everybody in this country that when it comes to nominating candidates for the general election ballot, that’s a decision made here in this state by Iowans and nobody else.”

The King-Rove dustup — which is driven primarily by King — obscures the fact that the Iowa congressman probably meets more of the subjective electability criteria than any of the other prospective 2014 Senate candidates who give the GOP establishment heartburn.

King’s penchant for making provocative statements would undoubtedly hurt him in a statewide general election, but he ran a relatively disciplined campaign against a top-tier Democratic foe in 2012. He’s also more comfortable around the media than, say, Alaska's Joe Miller, and King raised nearly $3.8 million in the last election cycle — not bad for a House race.